Brit Tabloids - Why?

The middle market tabloids are much more sedicious than the low brow ones. i recon the mail must have caused its fair share of anorexia and bulemia for a start. It also seems to be very homophobic given its coverage of Portillo in the last week. This man ought to be the darling of the mail but instead because he admitted to 'homosexual experiences' whilst at university he is utterly reviled.

I get upset by how much these papers sell, but also I doubt the influence they really have over some matters.

It's difficult to say whether certain mass hysterias (Bulger Murder Vengeance, last year's paedophile witchhunts) have been fanned by the Tabs or not. Certainly they contribute, but these things have happened throughout history, before Gutenberg etc etc.

The lovely thing about the Tabs, though, is their Great Historical Contribution to the Soap Opera of British Life, which is indupitably CLASSIC.

Always intrigues me when the Sun's political editor is featured eg on Channel 4 news (Trevor something?): balding, bearded, thoughtful, scholarly — by no evident means a "sun reader". Isn't alot of its appeal that it dishes it cheekily out to the Libs and the Nobs and the Snobs = what *it* wd call "the establishment" = well-heeled do-gooder foax who from a v. safe distance are likely to argue that eg clearly released p//philes should of course be housed on this or that faraway council estate, and not in Hampstead Garden Sub*rb, and only a yahoo cd possibly think differently. (eg UK Tabloidism is a PRODUCT of the worst comfortably patronising weaknesses of UK BROADSHEET ELITISM etc etc...)

ps B•shell has just been kicked off the Sun.

pps What wd I think if a p//phile was housed in my block (where as it happens no children currently live — tho many live in the square...)? I wouldn't head up a cartoon Frankenstein-village mob with rages and burning torches, but would I sign a petition? I don't know. I don't want ever to have to make the choice, y'know? And if forced to, how easy wd it be for someone to exploit my resentment at being forced to?

I fear that Stevie's reference to the 'beautiful thing about the tabloids / soap opera of UK life' is just going too far. I think I know what you mean, Stevie, but... actually I think that the stuff you're on about is abysmal.

(Gay-mafia ploy = a damp squib at the time, and was shelved. However formation of new govt = gay-free: what's that abt? We quickly reach choppy waters: is the return of Mandelson a post-Stonewall triumph?)

Gareth: the reason why I focus on the Telegraph is that I live in one of the places over which it claims cultural sovereignty: broadly the Torygraph = shire Conservatism / the Mail = middle-class suburban Conservatism / the Sun = less strictly party-political prole suburban Conservatism now edging towards nu-lab (but not as much as it might: the Tories regained 3 seats in Essex last month). The 'Graph doesn't claim to "speak for the people" of Bradford or north London, so no wonder you find it irrelevant. It's only relevant if you're one of those people whose cultural choices it would seek to restrict, and I think my location makes me so.

But the Boy of Badgers is right about the unspeakable Mail. No other paper makes me feel physically sick simply through touching a copy.

I was very disappointed when I found out that the News of the World was not related to the Weekly World News. Now the WWN is a tabloid I can actually understand and enjoy. Considering that the WWN is actually a parody of the right wing "of the people" opinions espoused by other tabloids in things like "My America by Ed Anger".

And the saga of Batboy. Batboy is far more interesting than ANY member of the royal family.

But I think to be disgusted across the board at tabloids (except the Mail) is a bit dramatic.

Metro is a very interesting development in the Tabloid market as it aims to do all the Standard tabloid things in a slightly more concentrated way and without the weight of tradition on it. Traditional tabloids change very slowly as they are scared of offending or frightening off their audience. Metro is bright breezy and appears to have the IQ of a five year old - which makes it most amusing. It also wants you to buy the Mail and Evening Standard that day which is less amusing.

If it didn't sell, then it would suggest a difference between the reasons given by tabloid readers for doing so and the real reasons. I have heard it said that it is more difficult to write for a tabloid than a broadsheet and if "Trevor something" on C4 News is typical that would appear to be the case - not if the Garry Bushells of this world are more common than the Trevors, however!

Tabloid Independent, now there is an idea.... Broadsheets of course are full of endless so called analysis which keep them going. There really is only so much news as BBC News 24 have found out to their cost.

We had a big scary meeting with my editor, our managing editor, their chief sub and their editor. During the meeting my flies came undone and... hold on I think I've told this story.

Very suspicous of metro because, as already pointed out, stories come from the Mail. London could do with a citywide daily to go up against the standard, the manchester evening news would be a good model. Could do with some views from the left in the evening. However the standard seems mainly to be bought by commuters from the more tory home counties. Does anyone who lives in london proper buy it? Actualy to be fair I used to buy it now and then on the way home from work and it used to make me very irate.

1. its stories seem to come from a general news source / feeding off anything they can find, judging from the resemblance of their stories and the Guardian's.

2. The 60-second interviews are unusually good for what they are. They did LLOYD COLE only last month! LLOYD COLE!!!!!

3. And the letters in the Metro are surprising - they seem to be dominated by sarcastic progressives.

I'd be interested how the metro thing works

Any newspaper which gave us the story of the fingerknob is a great newspaper in my book (and yet no other paper picked it up. Basically a bloke in Georgia had his knob lopped off so they replaced it with one of his fingers - fitting urinary tract and spunk canal down where the bone would have been. His girlfriend was exceptionally pleased apparently...)

I hate the Mail but do not read it. I think what people mean is they hate the mentality of it and most people who read it seem to agree with it in a way that is not necessarily true of the Sun (i.e the allegedly ironiic reading of it).

Ed's point about Evening Standard readers: of course it has an editor who barely spends *any time at all* in London. No wonder it's a travesty of the paper London deserves.

Daily Mail headline: (somethingsomething) boost for Kerry
Telegraph: Bush prepare victory speech (or something)
Independant: (Bush blah blah Kerry etc.)

The Sun: Kat Has Her Kitten!! - Eastenders star Jessie Wallace (Kat) gives birth to baby girl, and named her Tallulah Lilac.

aw.

The Daily Star was great too - TERRORISTS PLOT TO BLOW UP BECKS! - 13 al-qaeda lunatics arrested for plots to blow up the Bernabeu

The Guardian's midi-sized one launches next year, I think.

This is correct. They said they would continue to run both formats as long as it was financially sustainable, or something like that. That was Thursday last week. They announced on the the Sunday that they were to go fully tabloid, or *ahem* compact.

I don't know if it has been mentioned at all here, but the Guardian has announced it will go to European Broadsheet (slightly smaller) in about 2006 (I think this was to do with pressing equipment and availability or suchlike).

The front of the mail vs Independent this morning makes me think (a) I should buy the Indie more (b) I should really insist my mother stops reading the Mail (I have been trying for years).

That Mail front page is beyond depressing.

(Can someone fill me in on this Clarke County thing, I appear to have missed it altogether).

"Family from hell" is an unfortunate thing to put right about that picture. Go Dirty Des!

1. Whenever Bush is told "you have no mandate for this war" he always replies "you forget Tony Blair."

2. Tony Blair being so uncritically and slavishly behind Bush/the war undoubtedly helped to legitimise the whole enterprise and boost Bush's personal ratings in America.

3. Tony Blair is so uncritically and slavishly behind Bush/the war for the same reason he impersonates a Tory Prime Minister the rest of the time - because he is scared that Middle England will boot him out at the next election.

4. And which newspaper is the most stalwart of backbones for "Middle England"? Why, the Daily Mail.

So really it was the Daily Mail wot won it for Bush.

MARCH OF THE MORAL MAJORITY

phew! I thought it was gonna say Kat Slater lost her baby daughter or something!

I disagree with this Marcello - it is pretty much admitted by all quarters that Labour will take the next election. Not necessarily with the comfort of the last (the Lib Dems are aiming at about 80-90 seats, and will probably get quite close), though the key part depends on the Tory performance that doesn't look forthcoming.

Blair's position has now changed - I almost see it that Blair is now more accountable to the Labour party members than to the electorate, mainly as a result of his plan to not stay for a fourth term. The third term is in the bag, and with the majority he will carry the only way for him to be ousted is to lose the Labour party backing. The proximity to Bush may be enough for this in the next few years.

I am actually quite interested to see how Blair and Bush now work. Their motives - neither seeing beyond 2008 most likely - could now adjust somewhat. Both Bush and Blair give a sense of wanting to be legends. I kind of fear where they may go from here, and to who they are accountable.

If you replaced Bush/Iraq with Europe/asylum I would be 100% in agreement with you. The Mail's political influence goes far beyond party politics.

'The Victory of the Moral Majority'

Oh, God.

-- koogs (il...), November 4th, 2004.

...followed by the five words: "...this is all our fault."

I'm not saying what SHE does is right, but come on, this is way over the line.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=uk&q=sophie+anderton&btnG=Search+News

RIP

Sophie also made a disgusting sexual slur about Kate that cannot be printed.

spoilsports

The contestants for Sophie's body are normally rich and powerful. She's had a string of high-profile lovers including industrialist Robert Hanson, footballer Mark Bosnich, nightclub boss Mark Alexiou and football club owner Simon Jordan.

WTF "contestants"?

What is most shocking about this is that she was paid 100k to be the face of Face Bake. Do these companies have fcking money to burn? More taxes are needed.

"I'm a rich and powerful high-profile lover, GET ME OUT OF HER!!"

Awesome "why can't the working classes be as progressive as me?" start to this thread, btw

Is this a new reality TV show?

i recon the mail must have caused its fair share of anorexia and bulemia for a start.

insight

I really hope he did mean "recon" and not "reckon", and he rolled up to his local newsagents in camo.

i mean ultimately the mail had no part in bush's victory and they are still out of step and out in the cold as far as british politics go. so fuck them, they're laughable.
-- debden, Thursday, 4 November 2004 10:17 (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

Someone didn't touch wood.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2010/4/21/1271846468785/Daily-Star---21-April-201-007.jpg

They missed the word "Jordan" off there...

Ouch

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/145880/Rockstar-Games-Grand-Theft-Auto-An-apology/

"Your Shout is unavailable for this story"

the old tabloid question, mendacity or stupidity? did they publish it knowing full well it was bullshit, purely for sensationalism and knowing they could get away with a cheap apology? or are they really so thick they couldn't see it for the obvious throwaway photoshop gag that it was?

http://i27.tinypic.com/2iihdn4.png

^lol I was trying to figure out how to get the url for that so I could paste it here but nothing doing :/

Really though, how could they have known that tiny unheard of company 'Rockstar Games' might have had the legal muscle to take leading and not-at-all-in-their-death-throes newspaper the 'Daily Star' to the cleaners?

Didn't find it either so I just cut it out of a screenshot :-) xpost

http://boingboing.net/2015/07/17/the-sun-publishes-1933-film-of.html

http://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CKJUUj6W8AAmU0L.jpg?resize=600%2C764

Queen Mum is the story there.

Tbf The Sun have much previous history of hate-campaigning against the very same people the Nazis were murdering in their early KL system at this point ie Gays, "Workshy Asocials", "Professional Criminals", communists etc. And it isn't exactly a shock revelation that most of that family were big Nazi stans, even post holocaust some of them publicly defended Hitler and they have loads of 2nd cousins etc who were top rank SS officers.

feel like the best reaction is "lol" - anything that makes royalists queasy is probably good

Might stick on the news just to watch the royal correspondent squirm.

Murdoch et al. was just as much as kicking the establishment - as long as they replaced it.

People are saying 'Queen Mum was 33' but as a Haneke fan we all know that being fucking five doesn't excuse you of anything.

"It is not damaging, they were people of their time"

the mail's examples of 'the british public reacting with fury' over this are pretty lol

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/07/18/09/2AA4984E00000578-3165923-image-a-4_1437208912228.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/07/18/09/2AA30CA400000578-3165923-image-a-6_1437209215084.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/07/18/09/2AA3333E00000578-3165923-image-a-10_1437209234174.jpg

good work Rupe

So far Hugo Vickers seems the pick of the squirming pro royal brown-noser crew, what a piece of work!

of course we must remember that in 1933 nobody had any idea what this anti-semitic far Right hate party led by a dude who'd published a book setting out exactly what his military plans were for Europe was all about

and nobody would be further removed from any insight into contemporary German events than the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Well this will be an good illustration of how moronic and self delusional this country is prepared to be.

George V sent Hitler a birthday card days before he invaded Poland and although the holocaust wasn't in the full human meat grinder stage at this point, plenty of genocide in the thousands had occurred in the KL system and it certainly wasn't a secret. Neither was the T4 extermination of the disabled program that was also in full swing at this point.

it were a more innocent age. you kids don't understand, back then everybody wanted to exterminate disableds and trade unionists. they only ever liquidated their own.

that salute was just polite you know! just saying 'hi', what's the harm?

Queen Mum is the story there.

Absolutely, which is no doubt why that angle is being ignored by most the British media.

Hugo Vickers dismissed her renowned anti-semitism/pro-nazi stance with "it is a misconception, she actually hated the Germans" and he actually said this with a straight face.

who can forget those images from the war tho, the Queen Mum queueing up at the butcher's alongside ordinary East End housewives so she could claim her 2 sausages and a quart of dripping for the week?

She certainly hated the Jewish ones, give her that. (xp)

Kinda interested in how this film came to light given how deep if must have been buried.

Youtube

Harry sending it round on WhatsApp with the comment 'lol!!!'

Yeah, wd be interesting to know where this film has been stashed all these years.

I was listening to some fucker on R4 mentioning Chaplain's The Great Dictator and how fake sieg heiling was common at the time because people were just having a bit of jolly fun and lampooning Hitler because they thought he was a bit of a bally idiot. obv with them being royal they got an exclusive screening 7 years before it was filmed.

just had some fucker on 5 Live humming and hawing about "it was probably a joke probably altho we don't know what the Queen Mum's views were on Nazi Germany cos the letters have all been hidden away but she done a marvellous job in the war anyway nobody can have any doubt about that anyway they was probably joking"

Ordinary folk who lived in Nazi Germany often displayed the same kind of same type of delusional hysteria as a coping mechanism. What gets me is are people still so emotionally invested in these horsey faced cousin fuckers in the 21st century that they cannot accept that they have a very unsavoury past and are fucking appalling people.

Gawwwwd bless you, Ma'am! Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein G & T?

lol!

just in case the above episode had made you forget what evil cunts these fuckers are, the nitrous oxide fear campaign has just been revealed (as it always was to anybody who knows anything about what nitrous oxide actually is) as some post-leah-betts horseshit of the most profound & awful order

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1342831/streets-full-of-polish-shops-kids-not-speaking-english-but-union-jacks-now-flying-high-again/

can we bomb them please? or declare them a terrorist organisation, and then bomb them?

obviously evacuate all their cunt workers, then bomb them, i'm not a murderer

or just, like, tighten press restrictions until they're not allowed to exist?

they must be breaking the law by this point

leave it son

there was a piece on the news the other day where they were talking a changes in one northern town, i can't remember which, and they showed this recently shut down old fashioned bakery on one corner and spoke about its 130 year history that had now sadly come to an end. it's not hard to see how things had changed, the reporter said as the camera panned out to reveal that two doors down was a new polish mini-market. and then you had some horrible old wretch ranting about how immigration was destroying his town, and inside my head i was just yelling hang on there me old mates, i think other social forces are leading to changes on your high street, primarily it's people going to tesco wherever instead for their groceries, that one polish shop is actually a sign of life and community springing back up from the collapse, heck you could even walk in there and be part of it yourself. really it's exasperating beyond belief

sorry that's simplistic ranty phone typing and yes there are lots of other things too, mostly springing from 40 years of terrible government, but arrgggh

Every independent shop in a town centre closes to make way for phone shops and the same High St chains as every other town (or just closes down and stays empty for years) = NBD
one of them turns into a Polish shop = end times

(I love my local Polish shop)

i drank a frugo AND a tymbark today

poland will give me diabetes

If they weren't going to get in trouble for calling drowning Syrian children cockroaches (note: Sun editor Stig Abell is now running the highbrow Times Literary Supplement and tweeting about intolerance) they never will.

i drank a frugo AND a tymbark today

LOL, that's the spirit that made this country of ours great once, I salute you, sir!

There's no Central polski sklep but there's a rather good Polish bar in Little Turnstile, mmmmmm bisongrass vodka.

that is a good place. lol @ the thought of it doing bumper business because rammed to the rafters with guilt ridden rootless cosmopolitans.

Did that used to be Na Zdrowy? It had shut down last time i went by there but it's definitely good to hear it has reopened if it's the same one.

I think it's just "The Polish Bar" and IIRC it hasn't been closed in the 12 or so years I've worked in or near Holborn

There's a great Polish restaurant in Elephant & Castle that this is making me want to go to.

I suspect that most of the tabloids (except the Express and maybe the Mail) didn't actually want Brexit at all, they just wanted to put the shits up the government but didn't think it would actually happen. And you might see some panic and recriminations and backpedalling in the future.

A lot of people who purposefully distanced themselves from the consequences of their words have suddenly realised that just ignoring that distance doesn't mean it didn't exist. That Stig Abell thing is a case in point.

I mean when even KELVIN MACKENZIE is starting to think "hang on, did I make a mistake here?"...

Fuck The Sun, the Polish story yesterday and then today a leader "utterly condemn attempts to provoke division in our society". https://twitter.com/tonygallagher/status/747559551323475968

Learning is Fun

Who even hates on a polish shop? They're great. I I hadn't given up meat I would be knee deep in kielbasa right now.

Disaster! My local Polish shop has shut down! I blame the Sun.

RIP excellent cold meats counter, Łapsy bacon crisps, the fridge full of mysterious cheese triangle packs and Jogobella yoghurts

I am probably the last person on ILX to have seen this tweet but:
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/750272008479539200

Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn
Final thought on @scrabbmp: a thoroughly decent man who fought the right One Nation campaign and goes with dignity. He will be PM one day.

Sir Eric Pickles ‏@EricPickles 11h11 hours ago
I agree

I assume Tom Newton Dunn is just at the Sun until a more respectable job comes along - probably true of most of their staff.

I can...just...about...see him as some sort of Communications Director for PM Crabb.

https://twitter.com/afuahirsch/status/755004063603916800

Kelvin McKenzie making friends and influencing people again.

They're criminals. Prosecute them for fuck's sake

Tried that.

In 2004, Glover proposed a new compact upmarket newspaper to be called The World with fellow journalists Francis Wheen and Frank Johnson under the chairmanship of Adam Broadbent, a former managing director of finances at Schroders plc. The proposed newspaper was loosely modeled on Le Monde in France, and was intended as a response to the dumbing down of some quality titles

http://i.imgur.com/MF3IRlj.jpg

That article is completely insane.

The Mail is hilariously mad at the FT for undermining its Brexit boosterism with facts and that.

the online version goes with the somewhat more diplomatic "Owned by the Japanese", but still uses "Japs" in the url:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3734066/STEPHEN-GLOVER-Owned-Japs-loved-Eurocrats-pompous-Pink-poisonously-trashes-Britain.html

(also Glover's online byline photo looks like it it was taken around 30 years ago)

http://img.thisismoney.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/StephenGlover_203x150.jpg

Whatever these assholes think they're defending, you're probably not included.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvRbifRWgAAXAkr.jpg

Yep. It was heartening to see, on my first visit to Liverpool last month, how seriously the Sun boycott is still taken there. Outside of that kind of mass action against the paper itself, i don't know what else might be effective - given that the press complaints process in the UK is so weak. Eventually there will be a correction acknowledging that particular photographs were of translators or adult refugees still in France (rather than in the UK) but it'll be buried on page 37. A boycott of advertisers might help but the Sun is run as a vehicle for wielding power - the economics are secondary.

hopefully this will advance the war on criminal journalism

think we might as well all get tooled up and trained and get the class war started at this point

solve a lot of legitimate concerns about strains on the national resources by executing bigots, too

I think Brexit is doing funny things to the hate-papes. The execs are all clearly cheerleadering scum insisting it will all work, but of course much of the London-based young and underpaid staff actually making the papers (and especially the digital teams) are all the core Remain vote.

The cognitive dissonance of working for a newspaper that just said on its front page that you should shut the fuck up must be blinding.

As Brexit starts to implode, I'm guessing there's more than a few interesting conferences in there between snarky lower-level staff and their bosses. The execs can't just scream at the general public to shut it, they now have to try and lash their staff into line as well. Tsarist officers ordering their troops to fire on the communists kind of thing.

It's *definitely* leaking into the output. Partly in subversive ways -- cf Sun online piece yesterday showing all the tweets mocking "tea and biscuits" strategy, with a token "happily the industry seemed to like the idea" paragraph tacked on at the end -- but I also wonder if it's not making the top editorial lines even more histrionic than usual as the execs try to lalalala can't hear you even the people in their own offices.

Even The Mail is creaking at the seams. Somebody there knew what they were doing when they put that "look at Cindy's all-grown-up 15-year-old daughter" picture right next to the "these immigrants are in their 80s!!!!" splash.

The print media are completely dependent on consumer confidence for advertising and that is taking a complete pounding right now. Both the Mail and Sun newsrooms (like newsrooms everywhere) are full to the rafters with self-hating liberals.

I'm not sure even the Sun execs expected the Leave campaign to actually win, the likes of Tony Gallagher are true believers but more generally it's one of those moments when they started out wanting to give the government a bloody nose and ended up accidentally killing it, with no idea what to do with the corpse.

More generally, there are so many people out there desperate for someone to tell them it's okay not to give a shit about the poor/starving/displaced so they'll lap up any validation from the tabloids. CF Lily Allen's "crocodile tears", Lineker's "lies" etc. This could still backfire on the Sun, Lineker is still probably more popular with their core readership than they are, which is why they've gone after him so vociferously. Plus any opportunity to knock the BBC obviously.

It's coming to something where expressing support for Gary Lineker of all people represents a progressive standpoint.

I know right?

I'm sure there are about a million reactionary dicks in football who are about to be wheeled out to provider a 'counter-argument'.

http://www.usefulvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Richard-Keys-Commentator-Voice-Artist.jpg

Booming posts stet and Matt. Am too cynical at this point to think this will backfire for the Sun though. The fact alone that the Sun still exists boggles the mind.

The cognitive dissonance of working for a newspaper that just said on its front page that you should shut the fuck up must be blinding.

On a more puerile level see also the reference to Lineker's ears from a newspaper whose editor-in-chief's are significantly larger.

Let Lineker be the hill they all die on. I just want them to die tbh.

that's the spirit

tbf to Keysey, it wouldn't surprise me if he had fairly extensive experience of trying to work out which Arabs are 18 or not.

lol, shade

I'm sure there are about a million reactionary dicks in football who are about to be wheeled out to provider a 'counter-argument'.

I suspect Chris Kamara has been wheeled out for tonight's HIGNFY to talk about this very thing, as maybe the highest-profile football-punditing "comedy" employee of Sky. Though I suspect he won't say anything about it and it'll just be "hyuk, Harry Redknapp ran over his wife".

It's abundantly clear that there can be no accommodation with the tabloids (or the Telegraph) politically. They have the EU policy they want, they have a PM firmly committed to delivering the immigration policy they want, they have shifted public discourse to a point where the city boys on my commute home are comfortable in loudly saying that truck drivers should have carte blanche to run over any suspected refugees they see, they have the BBC and Guardian running scared, they have Labour moderates parroting their 'legitimate concerns'...and it's still not enough. The Lineker headlines aren't about shifting policy or perception, they're about ruthlessly crushing any squeaks of dissent.

In the long term, this might even help Corbyn to some extent. idk how long anyone will be able to maintain the argument that if you just 'win back The Sun', etc you can bring incrementalist progressivism in its wake.

Both the Mail and Sun newsrooms (like newsrooms everywhere) are full to the rafters with self-hating liberals.

'twas ever thus tho, surely, ffs.

"started out wanting to give the government a bloody nose and ended up accidentally killing it, with no idea what to do with the corpse"

boom

I liked this bit from the recent Guardian book review of a Cameron aide's referendum diaries - not really news but a concise summary:

At election after election, including the most recent one, the Tories could rely on the rightwing press to assassinate the characters of opponents and megaphone Conservative messages. Cameron had clearly not thought enough about having that firepower turned against him. He finds out what it was like to be Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg and hasn’t a clue what to do about it.

Initially hoped Cameron had taken this in, in a "you mean it wasn't just my birthright natural charm, oratory skills and political genius that won me some elections?" sort of way, but actually thinking about how much May has taken it to heart and seems to be operating entirely within the boundaries set by Dacre et al, I might wish it had been internalised a little less.

Surprised they turned on Lineker quite so immediately and viciously, and I v much hope that does not work out for them, but I won't hold my breath.

not for the first time
http://www.themediablog.co.uk/the-media-blog/2015/01/lineker-threatens-to-sue-the-sun-over-tax-story.html

Who are the big/high profile advertisers in today's Sun?

I don't know what the answer is but I don't see the UK going anywhere but further into the toilet while The Sun, the Mail and the Express continue to operate as they do, and continue to be read so widely here.

They're are all losing between 1-300K readers a year in print. Online subscriptions will probably increase at around the same rate (think they already for The Sun) mind you and the Mail site is insanely far ahead of anyone else in average daily visits.

I know it's partly "people saying stupid provocative things on the internet" but this state of affairs where it's seen as acceptable to actively wish death on refugees makes me despair.

Oh I think we should take people who say that at their word

The Lineker headlines aren't about shifting policy or perception, they're about ruthlessly crushing any squeaks of dissent.

This is the most chilling thing isn't it? I don't know enough about Lineker's popularity to know who'll come out on top this time but it's a warning to other celebrities, in perhaps more precarious positions, not to try it.

They should though

He's not that popular but, as an ex-footballer, he can't so easily be dismissed as just some arrogant middle class tosser, the way Lily Allen was.

As TV presenters go he seems very popular? I mean I guess he's no Clarkson...

He's pretty popular. But as the MOTD anchor and actually successful former England player he's in a position of power with people who wouldn't pay much attention to, say, Steven Fry or indeed Lily Allen saying much the same thing. Which is why they're trying to dismiss him as a luvvie, not very successfully.

The hysteria is being ramped up because we are at peak Brexit hubris right now. In the same way that support for wars collapses when people start coming home in body bags, they are terrified that support for Brexit (or at least a Hard Brexit) will collapse once the negotiations get difficult and the economy tanks. Ultimately there are lots of Leave voters who just wouldn't be told it would be a disaster, but increasing amounts will change their mind once they see with their own eyes that it'll be a disaster.

For the first time possibly ever they have a Prime Minister who is prepared to follow their agenda almost in its entirety but there is a hefty element of 'be careful what you wish for' here - but they have to whip up with-us-or-against-us sentiment now to entrench sentiment before things start going wrong.

I think Jon Gaunt won best non-sequitur with 'how can someone who advertises junk food to kids try to tell us what's racist'.

lineker is def popular, he'd be a national treasure in a decade or so if he would stop spouting his vile leftist views

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/27/revenge-of-the-tabloids-brexit-dacre-murdoch

Several choice quotes

"Brown contacted the Sun … agreed to rearrange his diary so that he could go to their office that day … and sat down with the Sun’s outspoken rightwing political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, for an interview which … rapidly became a negotiation about policy.”

"During the Cameron governments, it felt like they (Murdoch and Dacre) were the adults, and the politicians were children.”

“When I look back at the words I used to use as a Sun sub,” James Alan Anslow remembered, “‘the gay plague’, ‘black gangs’. You’d get sacked if you used those now!”

A Sun journalist emailed me: “Just had massive compulsory redundos in editorial. Hardly enough bodies left to get out the paper. Mood is of the post-apocalyptic variety – survivors staggering around dazed and confused.”

I've always had a healthy disgust and anger against the Mail/Sun etc but today's front pages have really upset me. I can't concentrate on anything and I feel even more dispirited than ever. Fuck this country and fuck this sleepwalk into fascism. I never thought I'd see this kind of thing in my lifetime but I was obviously just being naive.

Stop Funding Hate... aka The Daily Mail

.. hit these cunts where it hurts. More of that please.

yeah keep it up

dismantling the tabloid press is pretty much the #1 priority for uk progress right now (aside from yknow education reform, mental health treatment etc)

corbyn should announce stringent press standards reform, he'd probably gain more support than he loses

dismantling the tabloid press is pretty much the #1 priority for uk progress right now

this

corbyn should announce stringent press standards reform, he'd probably gain more support than he loses

Hmm.

On the one hand, anyone who speaks out against our red-topped kingmakers will not have a happy political career (though perhaps this can't get any worse than now for Corbyn)

On the other, it's interesting how both sides of the Brexit divide and now the Trump divide blame media misrepresentation: the alt-right's ire for "mainstream media", Trump's remarks on a "rigged press" and angry Brexiteers railing against the MSM while somehow seeing the tabloids as on their side against a conspiracy of metropolitan elites; the anti-Islamic German right's revival of favourite Nazi word "Lügenpresse" (and when I first read it I thought, hmm, yes, useful word for the tabloids, only to look up its history and feel itchy all over), which the internet tells me is now an alt-right buzzword outside Germany too

so maybe people from across the political spectrum could be brought onside, but "moar govt/quango intervention" is going to be hard to sell to the anti-elite and small-govt crowds, and obv the higher-ups know exactly what they're doing with this MSM meme

"So today I had to write abt Jo Cox"
"Ah that sucks man"
"Sucks even harder if you work for the Daily Hail, like me"
"How did you tend to the expectations of yr readership on this very delicate matter?"
"Immigrants, mate, immigrants. And that her death was her own fault."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyBrtDRXcAA78CG.jpg

Bold of the Daily Mail to suggest that anyone concerned about immigrants is now a terror suspect.

can someone straight up firebomb the daily mail

also, hi theresa, i'm deadly serious

OMG, a Turkish person has a byline on that race-baiting - wonder if making someone w/foreign origins write shit about immigrants is the initiation rite at Dacre Towers?

The Mail have spent so much time pandering to repulsive right wing extremists they can't suddenly change tack and condemn one who murders an MP in cold blood, oh no.

How many angry articles have they written about the decline in social housing in the same time period? Just wondering...

If he'd got bedroom taxed or sanctioned out of his home, worrying that the next tenants might be immigrants would be classic fuckwitted legitimate concernism.

The Mail have spent so much time pandering to repulsive right wing extremists they can't suddenly change tack and condemn one who murders an MP in cold blood, oh no.

― calzino, Thursday, November 24, 2016 2:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

at this point i consider the mail and the sun to be part and parcel of the far right

I don't see any other possible conclusion.

I can confirm today that following that landmark libel case, Katie Hopkins has entered into an IVA to avoid bankruptcy. I knew for a while but could not say anything for legal reasons. The arbitrary defender of free speech didn't want anyone to know, ironically...

— Jack Monroe #bootstrapcook (@BootstrapCook) September 15, 2018

I've just spent the day at the hospital but that's cheered me right up that, thanks